


natural as the rain

by FlipSpring



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: a little bit of self harm ideation, a little bit of suicidal ideation, family friendly But, its the Bar SceneTM, life is love and pain and surviving and things you have to do cuz there no other choice, no major character death but its gonna feel like it, rated A for Angst, this is extremely angst youve been warned, youll have 2 have a frank discussion w your kids about mortality & existentiality after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 19:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20569505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: God hadmadehim this way. All powerful, all knowing, all seeing God. She’d made him to question, she'd made him to persevere, to feel pain, to be exactly as he was.





	natural as the rain

**Author's Note:**

> no offense to other fics who tell me to listen to a song before reading (I never do), **but I'm different**
> 
> go listen to "This Life" by Vampire Weekend. or don't.
> 
> lyrics bookending this fic are from that song.

_baby, I know dreams _  
_tend to crumble at extremes_  
_I just thought our dream would last a little bit longer _

_there's a time when every man _  
_draws a line down in the sand _  
_we're surviving, _  
_we're still living _  
_I was stronger_

~

He took another shot. It didn't taste like anything.

It was hard to think of anything but how he might have stopped it all from happening. If he'd ditched Hastur sooner, had gotten to the bookstore faster – Aziraphale had _just_ been on the phone with him. Crowley had _just_ hung up on him, only half-aware of Aziraphale's voice in his ear, and that would be the last time Crowley heard his voice ever again.

He took another shot. It didn't feel like anything. The only thing he felt was something twisting, burning up inside, physically, spiritually, a tangible anguish ripping apart his ribcage, shredding his lungs.

It was hard to think of anything but the pain. He was a demon of Hell, a fallen angel, he _knew_ pain. It was his job to know it, to inflict it.

He slumped to the stained bar-table. But _this_ pain? He'd never known anything like this. He would have scoffed that it was physically impossible for emotions to hurt so _badly,_ if only he weren't experiencing it firsthand. He was being speared, spitted, roasted alive.

He went to take another shot, but spilled it. He swallowed back a keening sob, and slumped further down against the bar table. He was, after all, in public. There were other people here, going about their usual business, perfectly unaware that the world was Ending, utterly unaware that Aziraphale was gone.

"He might not be gone," Crowley whispered to himself, unconvinced, "He might, might, m– he might not."

He poured all his meager focus into pouring another shot. "God, _why._" Why would She do this? If the world was going to end anyway? Why do this? Was his pain some sort of sick sacrifice to Her? Some sort of twisted temple offering? Was She wringing from him all the last drops of every feeling She'd given him the capacity to feel?

"Fuck you," he whispered, and took another shot that tasted like ash on his tongue. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, _fuck you–_"

The other patrons of the bar were politely, studiously ignoring him.

_"Fuck you–"_ his voice cracked. All the things he'd never told his angel. All those times he'd taken Aziraphale for granted, assumed Aziraphale would be there by his side, even at the End of all things. But now he was alone.

There was a small part of Crowley that felt like it were observing his meltdown from a distance. Like he was sitting across the table from himself, watching him writhe with pain, crushed slowly under the weight of this invisible, intangible horror.

"You could die too," suggested this small part of himself, as it watched Crowley’s suffering with detached interest, "The puddle of Ligur in your flat might be enough to destroy you."

Crowley gasped a sob, and pushed himself back into a sitting position, and poured another shot of whiskey. He drank it, desperately thirsty in a way that was not thirst at all, and that could not be quenched with any actual liquid. The whiskey tasted like nothing.

Another small part of Crowley considered the appeal of suicide. To go out on his own terms. To stop feeling this pain. And the world was ending _anyway,_ wasn't it?

He felt himself fracturing.

"Pull yourself together," said the part of himself observing this.

He wouldn't kill himself, though, and he knew it.

Living was the only thing there was. To soldier on with this infernal thing called a ‘consciousness.’ There was nothing else, no other alternative. The utter cleansing destruction of Holy Water, the erasure of this pain... it wasn’t truly an option in Crowley’s mind. 

And the world was Ending anyway.

(But if it didn’t? Suppose it didn’t. Suppose he had to go on living through a conscious eternity in this world, serving Hell, serving God’s Ineffable Plan? Suppose he had to do it all, forever carrying around this pain of Aziraphale being gone like a ball of lead in his heart?)

(Maybe he would break one day, after all?)

(Maybe he’d already broken.)

Crowley swallowed back a scream of anguish, and spilled two shots worth of whiskey onto the table in the process of pouring one into the shotglass. He desperately wanted to rip himself apart, let his hands turn to claws, wanted to shred himself open and remove this hurt from the bleeding husk of himself. But he wouldn't do that either. He couldn't, anyway. 

God had made him this way. All powerful, all knowing, all seeing God. She’d _made_ him to question, she'd _made_ him to persevere, to feel pain, to be exactly as he was.

"I didn't mean to _fall_," he said, to nobody in particular, "I just–"

He broke off. And now he was having a psychotic break, apparently. His glasses slipped down his face, slightly. A faltering image of Aziraphale was sitting across the table from him, barely there. He looked watery, dilute.

“Aziraphale?”

“Can you hear me?” Aziraphale’s image asked. He sounded like he was speaking through a very long, echoy pipe.

This was just Crowley’s own brain playing a cruel and unusual game with him, surely. The pain inside him had grown brighter, somehow, twisting a new knot into itself, fighting between wanting to believe Aziraphale was back, and the cold reality that this was certainly just a phantom image called up by his stupid imagination.

“Yeah,” Crowley murmured, leaning heavily on one elbow, “Yeah, I can hear you, Aziraphale.”

The ghostly image of Aziraphale was staring into the space slightly above and to the left of Crowley’s head, apparently not really seeing. His eyes were washed out, oddly blank. “Did you go to Alpha Centauri?”

“Nah,” Crowley croaked, “Nah, I, I changed my mind. Ssstuff happened. I lost my best friend…”

The phantom Aziraphale continued to stare into space for a moment. And then he said, awkwardly, “I’m so sorry to hear it.”

Apparently Crowley’s imagination was all one big sadistic streak. He again felt the vague, aimless desire to die. And then he felt a more clear desire to fall asleep, unconscious, to turn this all off until such a time when it was somehow fixed, until a time when he could actually deal with it. (Nevermind that there was no time left in the world.)

“Back in my bookshop there’s a book I need you to get.”

This pulled Crowley sharply out of his own head. Why would imaginary Aziraphale say something like that? He couldn't understand.

“Your bookshop isn’t there anymore,” he said, soft. Confused. Apologetic. The pain inside him was splintering, turning jagged.

“Oh?”

“I’m really sorry, it burned down.”

“All of it?”

Crowley’s brain had completely given up on comprehending the situation it found itself in. “Uh, y–, nn, y-yeah. What was the book?”

“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of–”

Something clicked, and the hurt inside him exploded like shrapnel in his ribcage. Aziraphale _was_ alive, he was _here_, and, oh _God_, Aziraphale wasn’t _dead_, but–

“–Agnes Nutter! Yes! I took it!”

“You have it?”

Crowley scrambled to pull out the book, hold it up before Aziraphale’s blank and unseeing eyes. “Yes! Look! Souvenir!”

“Look inside, I made notes, it’s all in there–”

Crowley was frantic. His heart was beating so hard, so fast, that his blood was one big rushing sound in his ears. “Wherever you are, I’ll come to you, where are you?”

“I’m not really anywhere yet,” said Aziraphale, echoy, “I’ve been discorporated.”

“Oh.”

Aziraphale told him to meet him at Tadfield Air Base for the End of the world, and faded.

Crowley was left in the bar, alone, clutching a book of prophecy. The splinters dug deep inside him, barbed. The aching relief of Aziraphale being alive was competing for the bandwidth in his mind and heart against the overwhelming grief that refused to dissolve, competing against the need to get back up, to fight on, to drag himself out to Tadfield and meet Aziraphale for the End of the world.

He put down cash on the bar-table, and took the book with him. He made it behind the wheel of the Bentley before the overwhelming confusion and _hurt_ of it all twisted inside him anew, ripping at everything that was holding him together. Crowley turned the ignition, and pushed his glasses back into his nosebridge, and sobbed openly as he put the vehicle into gear, drove out into the busy London streets, his breath hiccupping in and out of lungs that didn’t even technically need air.

Aziraphale hadn’t died. But at the same time, it somehow felt as though he had.

The world hadn’t ended yet. He still had to go on. He had to try and stop it.

Shattered and alone, he drove to Tadfield.

~

_but I've been cheating through this life_  
_and all its suffering _  
_Oh Christ, am I good for nothing?_


End file.
